The moment the missile exploded, Silas Spann began to run. He didn’t need to see what was happening — he knew what was happening and instinctively bolted. Hiding under the light-all unit would have made more sense, but running away from the explosion felt a lot better. Spann ran toward the entry control point as fast as he could.
Colonel Morris was reaching for the radio inside his pickup truck when the explosion blew out the windshield. The truck was parked near the gate to the complex and the hole they’d cut in the fence. Morris felt like laughing, as the truck shook and got pounded with debris. It seemed comical: he was sprawled across the front seat and couldn’t get his legs inside the truck, no matter how hard he tried. The door slammed hard onto his left leg. And then he lay there, waiting for something big to hit the pickup. Morris looked up, saw the immense pillar of fire rising from the silo, and put his head back onto the seat.
Hukle was sitting on the tailgate. He managed to crawl across the bed of the truck and hide behind the cab, keeping his eyes tightly shut, amid the roar. Through his eyelids he saw a brilliant red blur. His hands got burned, and something shattered his right kneecap.
Hanson was standing next to the door of the pickup, right beside Colonel Morris. Hanson saw two explosions. The first one shot flames twenty-five feet high out of the exhaust vents, and the second obliterated the silo. The blast wave inflated Hanson’s uniform like a balloon, lifted him off his feet, tossed him down the road, and sent enormous steel beams flying past him.
Christal was standing next to Hanson. He saw the first explosion, missed seeing the second one, flew into the air, and landed twenty feet away. Christal covered his head as the debris fell, got up, looked around, thanked God for sparing his life, and checked to see if all his hair had been burned off. It hadn’t. But the left side of his face and both of his hands were burned.
Greg Devlin was standing about two feet from the gate, facing the silo. The blast wave knocked the wind out of him, like a punch to the stomach, picked him up, threw him onto his back, and slid him fifty feet down the asphalt road. Devlin felt completely under the control of some powerful, malevolent force, unable to move or resist it, propelled by air that seemed to have become rock solid. As Devlin slid down the road on his back, he saw molten steel and pieces of concrete flowing by him like lava.
“Oh shit, you ain’t gonna live through this,” Devlin thought. “I just hope it’s not painful.”
Seconds after the explosion, Devlin was lying in the road, feeling dazed and bleary, like he’d been coldcocked in a boxing match. And then he heard a loud voice in his ear yelling, “Run, run!” The voice scared the shit out of him. He didn’t see anybody, anywhere nearby. Devlin got up, ran for about five steps — and got knocked down again by steel rebar that had just fallen from the sky. It struck his right ankle, tearing the Achilles tendon. The rebar hung from a block of concrete about fifteen feet high and thirteen feet wide. The concrete was part of the silo door abutment. It had landed in the middle of the road, and if he hadn’t gotten up and started to run, it would have landed on him. When Devlin opened his eyes, he saw the shadow of this huge block of concrete, thought the Titan II had landed right next to him, and said to himself, “Oh, my God.”
Colonel Morris looked up again, when debris stopped falling onto the truck, and saw that flames were still rising from the silo. He figured it was time to leave. He got out of the truck, and the silhouette of something enormous in the middle of the road made him feel disoriented. Morris heard someone call for help. It was Hukle, sitting in the bed of the pickup, with his RFHCO suit pulled down to his knees. One of the knees was torn open, and Hukle said that he couldn’t walk. Morris pulled the RFHCO suit off him, picked him up, put him over a shoulder, and carried him around the piece of concrete, big as a mobile home, that was blocking the access road.
Devlin saw Colonel Morris and yelled, “Please help, I can’t move.”
Morris carried Hukle for about one hundred yards, lay him down in a field, and then ran back for Devlin. He picked up Devlin and put him over a shoulder.
Devlin could not believe the strength of Colonel Morris. The two were about the same size, and yet Morris was running while carrying him. The man was forty-two years old. Devlin couldn’t stop looking at his face. Blood was pouring down it. Morris looked like he’d been shot in the head.
“I have to put you down,” Morris said. “I have to get to the end of the road, or they’ll leave without us.”
Morris lay Devlin in the field beside Hukle and ran off.
